


Ex Machina

by TLara (larissabernstein)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Character Study, Established Relationship, Gol - Freeform, Introspection, Kolinahr, M/M, Mind Meld, T'hy'la
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 19:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3084551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissabernstein/pseuds/TLara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock’s journey through his meld with V’ger.</p><p>Originally published in T’hy’la #34, July 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta-reader Eimeo!

** Ex Machina **

 

_“Il y a des crimes de passion et des crimes de logique. La frontière qui les sépare est incertaine.”_

_(Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté, 1951)_

 

Floating. It is the one word that seems adequate to label his state, and yet it is not even close to a logical category, medical diagnosis or scientifically accurate description. It is a feeling. A feeling of weightlessness but he instinctively knows that he is no longer floating in space, spat out by a mind far superior to his. He experiences himself, however, curiously detached from his body which he only perceives as a faint impression, barely a shadow. Flashes of stroboscopic light still dance before his vision, but he cannot even tell if it is an optical illusion or a real perception. An attempt to concentrate on his eyes to determine their status only leaves him with the rather puzzling information that they are wide shut. Wide shut? He tries to get a hold of one of the fleeting pictures that speed through him, grasping its familiar shade and forcing it to abide with him, as nightmarish as it looks already at first sight.

 

_He is staring straight ahead into the abyss, eyes wide open, but he does not see anything but the blackness of death, while his hands are still tangled in the murderous ahn-woon, white leather recalling allegedly bygone days of violence and animalistic drives. Is it the mocking laughter of his ancestors that fills the hot air like soft but insistent silver bells, or is it only T’Pring’s laughter? He has failed his heritage again, proven his unworthiness in a challenge that has been a farce from the beginning to its fatal ending. The Vulcan blood in his veins is too thin indeed — but still thick enough for him to kill his captain and only real friend. The realisation hits Spock as if a major part of his katra has been ripped out of him, and no death could be painful or torturous enough for him to pay for his crime or at least dull the pain of this loss._

_Just as the transporter beam is about to take him back aboard the ship, he closes his eyes and the blackness immediately fades to a collage of images of his friend, moments in time captured in stills, smiles and looks and little touches, overlain by the death portrait of Kirk hanging lifelessly in the ritual noose, battered and bruised, his last thoughts stretching out and into the mind of his very murderer:_ Do not leave me. _It is not due to the transporter’s dematerialisation and reconverting process that this image becomes etched into his retina and into the depths of his being._

 

The memory is disturbing, but somehow it lacks the sharp edge he has usually associated with it; it does not… frighten him anymore. Is this death? Has he died in his attempt to find out more about V’Ger? Or has he, too, been reduced to a data stream and is now part of the living machine’s vast encyclopaedic cabinet of wonders? No, he is still Spock, self-aware and able to question his own perceptions, even if his faculties are obviously limited and altered at the moment. Is he unconscious? Dreaming? He is alone, but something has changed, inside him, and he cannot name it.

 

_“This will not change, Spock! I will be there for you, whenever you need me. Trust me.” Kirk’s face is honest and open, but it is difficult to pay single-minded attention to the serious topic at hand, when actual hands are busy manipulating Spock to full hardness again, while a rosy cock rubs lazily against his thigh. Bonding is out of the question, at least for the near future, and it irritates him more than anything right now that Human time specifications in interpersonal use are by definition vague and intangible. Yet who is he to force his Vulcan way on a man who has not only forgiven him that this same Vulcan way almost got him killed, but who has seen him through the remaining flames of his dramatic pon farr? Is it too much to accept the Human way this one time and try his best to adjust to the concept of lovers? There is something non-committal in the arrangement that does not simply worry or annoy Spock, but that hurts. It is shameful, but with every moment of passion they share, he can actually feel himself slip away a little more, control and balance shifting, his existence becoming a dangerous tight-rope act. He will not risk any deep mind meld with Kirk now, as important and healthy as it would be for Spock, but he might not be able to avoid an accidental and non-consensual bonding. And this would be a crime in Vulcan terms and — worse — an act of treason against the one he loves. Their usual shallow transference of those thoughts and sensations that are broadcast strongly enough, unsurprisingly mostly during sexual activity, equals mere crumbs for a telepath, but it will have to suffice._

_“You think too much, Mister.” Kirk dives down under the duvet. “I will not leave you. Can’t you feel how much I want you?” The words are muffled and Spock tries hard not to dwell too long on their exact phrasing anyway, because the Human way of choosing words is just made for misunderstandings if one looks too closely at one word or the other, the observation always tainted by the observer’s role, but suddenly his erection is engulfed in wet heat and a talented tongue makes him forget any further coherent musings. Pleasure hums along his nerve tracts and the sensation of being loved and desired bans all concerns. He will give all he is and take all he can get, because this is already much more than he deserves. The danger of being pulled apart by a longing which goes beyond this arrangement, and the fear of losing his sanity, is either something he has to learn how to master, or it is a small price to pay._

 

Pulled apart. Yes, he is torn into pieces, scattered, a shadowy dream-appearance of his self, mangled by a meld so powerful that it has most certainly “fried his brains” as Dr McCoy would undoubtedly enjoy calling the neurological trauma. But then his pieces are so fascinatingly calm, floating around, pushing and pulling each other like magnets. His dream-self chuckles and there is not a hint of guilt or self-deprecation. Dr McCoy. The Enterprise. Kirk…

…Jim! He must get a grip and use whatever is left of his mental abilities to regain consciousness, wake up and do his best to convey the information he has gathered about V’Ger. If he could only find the words to describe what he has discovered. It was so important… But there is no air for him to breathe, only smithereens of pictures and scenes to subsist on, one bleeding into the other. The giant face of a navigator turned probe. A gold-plated copper disk with two Human beings, the male waving at the spectator. Who is the golden man looking at him, walking right off the disk and asking him… 

 

_“Why?” The question spreads out between them, heavy and dark, strangely sucking the air out of the room and pushing him back until he can feel the mesh divider hard against his spine. And no, it is not only this single word, uttered in disbelief rather than anger, but the other man’s body that physically corners him and demands acknowledgement. Spock’s throat is dry and it is convenient to think that his aching vocal chords are to blame for his inability to form words, to at least try and explain his insane quandary, his life-long struggle, his now terribly acute fight for what little self-preservation his Vulcan soul can muster. The Human breath is hot on his face, relentless and strong as a Vulcan desert wind, but enticingly moist and musky. “Why?” But Kirk does not seem to expect him to answer anyway, because his mouth devours Spock’s almost simultaneously, forcing his lips and soul open to steal his already ragged breath and the last remains of resistance. Kirk’s tongue plunders him roughly and the captain’s angry erection rubs against his own aroused groin, pointedly accentuating the absurdity of a question that would not accept any answer, is not so much enquiry but accusation. Once again a serious talk will be denied by passion, considerations concerning the future will be muted by sexual desire. An aura of overwhelming lust already penetrates his shields and seeks out its laboriously suppressed counterpart, digging in his mind, pulling his own eagerness to the surface — to prove the point, win the argument. Kirk’s eyes are fire and hunger, the best means of defence:_ You cannot leave me. _It is a sad irony that the mad flames of pon farr come to Spock’s mind, as he lets himself be manhandled by the force of nature that is James T. Kirk. Vulcan strength would have overpowered the captain easily and many moments ago — no, many encounters ago — but it is the cursed Human weakness in Spock that gives in and allows the gamble with his soul to continue._

_Something tears and the sound of ripping fabric is unnaturally loud and pronounced in his quarters, loud enough to give him a moment of clarity and to push himself free from beneath Kirk’s body._

_“That is why.” Spock almost does not recognise his own voice, hoarse and broken, but he focuses on the basic tasks that will change everything, if not for the better than at least for good: picking up his suitcase, dragging his feet the shortest way across his quarters to the door, heading straight to the transporter room where the technician has been waiting for him for the last ten minutes. He must be quick now, elsewise he will have lost himself completely. No looking back, no looking at Kirk who is clinging to the mesh divider as if it were the only way to hold himself together, his forehead resting on the material, panting and his face flushed and wet. No looking at the desperation and helplessness which are disfiguring the handsome features._

_Spock insufficiently covers the rent across the side of his black traveller’s cloak, directly over his heart, by rearranging the garment’s folds. It is saturated with Kirk’s scent, its upper front is wet from his sweat. It must be sweat. It is a Human thing._

 

Klingons do not cry. But they experience shock and panic just like Humans when their ships or starbases with all their crew members are dissolved into binary digits in a matter of moments. The same is true of all sentient beings, and it is not so much the fear of impending, inevitable death, but the fear of the silent enemy, the horror of the unknown. And this is a feeling Spock knows all too well, because he has fled it time and again.

What has happened with these feelings at the moment of transformation to computable and storable data units? What has happened with all the emotions of their past lives, their joys and sorrows, their ecstasies and griefs, their pain and lust, stored in their memories? Emotions are more or less sophisticated responses of the nervous system, Spock reminds himself, to internal or external events, often hormonally induced; nothing magical or preternatural, but the very opposite — why should these primal and animalistic neurobiological tools not be translated into a code of some sorts, much like the composition of Deltan lachrymal fluid or bone density? A normally functioning transporter beam does not delete or change one’s thoughts, memories, emotions, katra — the biological software stays intact as long as the connecting hardware is not altered or incapacitated. 

Spock feels the dizziness starting to spin him around again, but he must concentrate. Ilia’s memories are still existent in her mechanical duplicate, her infatuation with Commander Decker among them, but the probe does not seem to be able to access them or make sense of them. It is a highly refined robot, but a robot still that is not able to decode the call from deep inside its memory banks.

 

_The call comes out of nowhere, and it is hard to believe in coincidence, because the timing is just too absurdly perfect. An alien consciousness of enormous telepathic power is touching his well-trained mind with its promises of an unparalleled supremacy of logic, at the very moment as the one, whom Spock had clandestinely and hopelessly named t’hy’la and has laboured to cast out of his mind, reaches out to him just as easily, from light-years away, a siren’s call:_ I need you. Do not leave me. _And the basic thought, sent out by a mere Human, is just as strong as the superior entity’s cognitive force, but while the latter resonates in Spock’s effort to find the ultimate logic, the former touches his Human blood, mercilessly bringing back what he has thought purged and shed. The master instantly recognises his failure, and her advice to search elsewhere for his answer resembles an ancient oracle, meaningful and reawakening hope in the desperate searcher; but it is a dismissal riddled with mystery and silent disgust._

_It is the sight of the abandoned kolinahr pendant on the sands of Vulcan — undeserved by the one who travelled so long on a hard spiritual journey, only to find out in the end that it has never been meant for him to arrive at the final destination, thanks to his half-breed limitations — that shapes contumely into geometric forms, reifies rejection into a palpable object, rationalising failure and bringing that which one could easily call fate’s mockery into a plain equation of flawlessly logical structure._

 

Flawless. Endless. Hopeless. Ilia is a robot-like probe, V’Ger an amazingly superior machine. And he? He is just a floating mind, trying to find its way back into his corporeal form. But a floating mind is at least better than a cold and barren computer existing in the self-delusion of being the only true life form.

 

_The “why?” is unspoken but this time it is clear that Kirk demands an answer and he demands trustworthiness: Why now? For me? For us? And Spock cannot give in to the siren’s call, for if he does, he will be lost again. He cannot afford to answer the silent question, as he must follow the only path that is left, now that another door has closed on him; the only possible being capable of holding his answers is out there, waiting for him. It is his only chance, to allow the alien intruder to drown out the invocation which still emanates from Kirk’s hope, charming his way into Spock’s long-suppressed subconscious, stirring his Human blood and the horrible ancient drives of pre-reform Vulcan. He must not fail V’Ger, the one who could turn out to be his equal, in the same pathetic manner that he failed the masters of Gol and the Vulcan way. There is a consciousness out there with perfectly logical thought patterns, exactingly ordered and most intelligently designed. Never before has he encountered such a powerful mind — no, some obstreperous remains deep inside him disagree, he has encountered a most powerful mind before, but he had consciously reduced it to feral passion, denying it its brilliance in order to preserve his self-assigned walls of hubris. It was this brilliant mind’s call that has disturbed his attainment of the kolinahr, not V’Ger’s._

_It costs him, but Spock manages to quell the voice and straighten his fragile mask. The answer is out there, not here on the ship._

 

He must be on the Enterprise, very probably in sickbay and maybe in a coma, maybe not. A healing trance is nothing Spock could initiate now, neither has he got the resources for this process, when he is not even able to accurately self-check his condition, nor the time, because his shipmates need him. The man on the bridge needs him, the one to whom he is willing to show his loyalty precisely because this man is not a computer. This man whose mind-touch will haunt him forever because it is all-too perfectly… compatible to his, in its own special and far too long denied way.

 

_It is the touch of a high-voltage mind, shooting right through the thick space suit gloves into his fingertips, setting his nerve tracts ablaze and firing myriads of data at his brain, mostly effigies of uncountable alien worlds, and the most prominent among them apparently V’Ger’s home planet — a world full of living machines, fine-tuned to efficiency and guided by the unerring laws of mechanics and intelligent technology, devoid of Humanoid mistakes and machinations. But much of the data stream also consists of transformed objects and beings, such as the destroyed Klingon vessels, the unfortunate space station Epsilon IX or Lieutenant Ilia, going at high pace through Spock, breaching his shields as easily as fictional ghosts from childhood books a solid wall. It is indeed more than a flow of information — he experiences the continuous flood as if actual planets and vessels were passing right through him, scrambling his molecules in the process and overloading his senses, reaching deep into his organs and deeper still into his mind, turning him inside out, ripping him apart and unearthing every single one of his own memories and impressions and all his ken. There is nothing he can hide from his meld partner — his past, his present and his unlikely future, all is there for V’Ger to feast on, and no, this is not an equivalent meld partner at all, it is a violent purgatory, burning him up and scattering his cells and smallest units over the vast land of knowledge that shows him that he is nothing, a mere dust spot on the map of the universe. And is this the self-annihilation that the masters of Gol preached, the total eclipse of the self in order to become one with the All? There can be nothing left of him, but he is still hurting so much that there is no expression for it in any of the billions of languages that scream in his battered mind and force their way out of his throat into the darkness. And this pain cutting right through him with a logic that is composed entirely of sharp blade — it is absolute blackness, lack of any and all colours, epitome of absence. It mirrors his own ache, no, it is his own, only supersized to a void of unimaginable dimensions. This is V’Ger’s pain, so familiar a longing but non-directional, a wanting that has not yet become aware of itself or identified what it is that it wants. It is a gaping wound or rather the missing vital part in this machine without which the perpetuum mobile slows down to the agonising repetition of one and the same question over and over:_ Is this all that I am, is there nothing more? _Can it be that knowledge has reached its dead end, that evolution has culminated in perfection only to negate itself? The cold blackness of wanting is what fills Spock’s vision and it swallows him, encloses his conscious form in blindness and ejects him, throws him out of V’Ger’s inner chamber, as the unworthy, failed acolyte of logic that he is, and it is an expulsion from an alleged paradise, but another part of him is past the pain and with the expulsion comes the revelation, his quest not met with answers but the all-important question of the omniscient itself._

_And Spock is seeing, suddenly and without any dramatic stage-effects: What you seek, it is already in you, and it has been all along. V’Ger has collected knowledge that spans the universe but it does not know yet how to decode essential parts of it. Feelings and motivations, moods and emotional stimulus, it is here, but yet confused, and this part seems so scandalously illogical that V’Ger has not yet acknowledged its need and accepted that which is already a vital but dormant element within its workings._

 

The world is a blurred picture with fuzzy edges, yet so bright and agleam that the sight is mostly made up of the colour white, and the part of him that is in the vanguard of his gradual regaining of consciousness wonders if the powerful light will blind him. But no, this time it is not a cruel assault on his optic nerve cells, and there is no pain anymore the rays would need to dissolve, no parasitic intruder they would need to fight, because the actual enlightenment has already taken place, in darkness, healing a devastating blindness of the mind. The white glare is perfectly softened by the slowness of the process and there is no way he could pinpoint the actual moment when he becomes aware of his surroundings. The picture gains colour and begins to take shape; amidst the purling of liquid sounds which flow inside and around him, individual voices become recognisable; bones and muscles make themselves felt as they press the weight of his body into the soft but supporting surface of a sickbay bed — they are heavy and numb in a bittersweet way as they return his corporeal form to him and ground his floating mind. It is a transition from what could pass for a dream to an equally familiar and new reality, one dissolving into the other, and yet both are identical rather than different, the gliding smooth and natural. His own dark-voiced laughter is a soft distant sound, echo of his newly found insights and voicing the unbelievable simplicity of matters — he _should_ have known, he _could_ have known, if he had only wanted to see what has lain in plain sight through all these years —, a sound still anchored in the realms of the other side, but real enough to draw attention, an unintentional but potent beacon for the central figure of his dream world, pulling its presence close. And it seems to be a proof of some kind when the real counterpart is the first object that comes into Spock’s sharpening focus, answering the call, a myriad of questions upon the other man’s face, Spock’s name on his lips an appellation of unmasked surprise and relief. And hearing it spoken by the other invests this name and its owner with actuality, makes him real and whole and reinstates his place in a complicated world full of mystery, challenge and beauty.

 

“Jim,” is the simple and only correct response and it has been all along. Everything else must and will fall into place now. Must it? Will it? Spock cannot bring himself to find his firm conviction illogical, a concoction of his mind driven by desperate hope and maybe nothing more than stubborn make-believe, as if his revelation were to automagically right the wrongs of the past and change more than only his future.

 

It takes him only a few laconic words to relay the important discovery about V’Ger’s motivation behind its search for its creator, but they double effortlessly as keywords for the struggle of a lifetime. _All this pure logic_ has not been able to answer his search and mute his longing.

 

And Jim listens. Confusion and comprehension play on his features; his eyes, however, attest that the message has found a willing understanding. This sight alone is already an absolution and enough for Spock to allow the nebula of unconsciousness to claim him again, cloud his tired senses and take him away, finally at peace. Maybe watching the pieces fall into place and trying to act on the revelation is not what it takes, the mutual exchange of a wordless apology and its unconditional acceptance enough to declare his mission completed, the past atoned. 

 

Two warm hands, however, grasping his bare shoulders, have none of that and demand a clear, unmistakable statement. The touch seeps through his skin, reaching deep into his inner world, pulling, demanding, claiming him; repeating: _Do not leave me._ Spock feels his heavy eyelids fluttering and opening of their own volition, and he breaks through the haze again, holding on to the look that keeps branding him, and words are not enough anymore, be they spoken aloud or conveyed silently. An answering touch it is that rises to speak unequivocally as Spock raises an arm to grab a uniform-clad biceps, sliding along the blue-grey sleeve to seek out the intimate contact of skin, a firm and determined grasp of hands and feelings, not shy, not afraid, not insecure. He feels Jim’s palms enclosing his hand, familiar fingers folding themselves over Spock’s, and squeezing it in an affirmative kiss that opens an arc which negates physical barriers, bright and forceful enough to alter the future of two men.

 

There is work to do, this much is clear. Neither mission is fulfilled, and it will require effort, courage and, admittedly, a little bit of luck to once again do the impossible, save the day and save themselves. But it is this very moment, that time — the time which is short enough to threaten a planet with its extinction — comes to a halt and the universe in all its endangered beauty and mystery frees itself of misunderstandings and complications, of wrong presumptions and false pride, to find its anchor and pivotal point in the wonder of simplicity.

 

It is but one firm spot whereon to stand — but it will do.

 

 

  
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